Sunday, July 29, 2012

How many of you sat through a homily today about sharing? C'mon, raise you hands. I can't understand why some people consider the "miracle" of the loaves and fishes to be about sharing. As I understand it, those folks claimed that the miracle that Jesus performed was to get everyone to share the food that they had brought with them. There are some problems with this.

First off, Jesus sets up the whole shebang by having the Apostles verify that there is no way the people can be fed. If the people had brought food with them, why then would they have to spend 200 days' wags to feed them? In fact, if they had brought food with them, all they had to do was sit and eat it; Jesus and the Apostles need do nothing. End of story. Nothing to see here, go home people.

But perhaps only a few people brought food, but they brought it in great quantities, and they needed Jesus to say a blessing in order to make them share it. Huh? Are we to expect that this was some sermon that Jesus uttered that made food vendors give away their stock? Where is the sermon? It is not mentioned here. We don't here "Jesus spoke the word and their hearts were opened." Instead we here "Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them."

Well, perhaps that's figurative speech? Sorry, but that doesn't work either. We are told "When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, 'This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.'" Are we to expect that the people wanted to make Jesus king, and called him Prophet, Messiah, because he convinced some food vendors to give away their wares?

And so my questions to the "sharing" theorists are these. Do you think Jesus God or a liar? Because He claimed to be God, so if He isn't, He's a liar. And if He is God, and God created the entire universe from nothing, why is it so hard to believe that He could make some bread and fish, that you have to invent ridiculous stories that don't fit the account in order to try to explain it away?